09 August 2017

News Story: Blackwater Founder Questions US Strategy on Afghanistan

Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince is publicly touting a proposal to shake up the US military strategy in Afghanistan, CNN reported.

"There are a lot of people that say: ‘just pull out of Afghanistan’. I disagree with that because I think the Taliban or ISIS (Daesh) would raise their battle flag over the US Embassy in six months or a year," Prince said in an interview that aired on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" on Monday night.

"That's bad. But continuing the same way -- I would say insanity -- that we've been doing for the last 16 years, that has to change."

Instead, the former Navy SEAL and founder of the controversial defense contracting firm Academi, has proposed implementing a US viceroy in Afghanistan and increasing the number of government contractors on the ground.

"They'd be military employees of the Afghan government," Prince explained. "Imagine them as a skeletal structure that provides leadership, intelligence, medical, communications and logistics support to all those Afghan battalions so it works reliably."

Prince has penned op-eds for USA Today and the Wall Street Journal on the plan, in which he compared the proposal for restructuring of the war to” a bankruptcy reorganization."

Prince said some in the White House, including one of President Donald Trump's top advisers, Steve Bannon, and members of the National Security Council, are open to the strategy, along with others in Congress.